Among its wealth of neoclassical details are the legs in the shape of inverted obelisks, the torsos of draped and winged caryatids and atlantes, and the allegorical figure (possibly Summer).

Meanwhile, the caryatids and atlantes just watch, waiting.

He has designed atlantes to support the temple at the top of John Simpson's towering column, and an art-deco-inspired grouping of gods and titans for the pediment midway up Franck Lohsen McCrery's building.

Origen

Late 16th century (originally denoting a person who supported a great burden): via Latin from GreekAtlas, the Titan of Greek mythology who supported the heavens and whose picture appeared at the front of early atlases.

Atlas was a Titan, or giant, in Greek mythology who was punished for taking part in a rebellion against the gods by being made to bear the weight of the world on his shoulders. He gave his name to the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, which are so high that they were imagined to be holding up the sky. A collection of maps is called an atlas because early atlases were published with an illustration of Atlas bearing the world on his back on the title page. The first person to use the word in this way was probably the map-maker Gerardus Mercator in the late 16th century. The Atlantic Ocean also gets its name from Atlas. The word Atlantic originally referred to the mountains, then to the sea near the west African coast, and later to the whole ocean.